Profiles

Behind the Scenes: an illustrated cover concept

Didn’t recognize your NAILS Magazine in the mailbox this month? That’s because we decided to mix up and do things a little differently. Twice a year, we sit down as a team to go over how to bring you, our loyal readers, the season’s latest polish colors. Sometimes we use the bottles in our photo shoots, sometimes we paint a model’s fingernails, but this time we came up with a whole new concept-illustrations. And we liked the idea so much, we decided to put one on the cover too.

So let us break it down for you. First, we took the polishes and applied them on white poster board. We had the boards shot with a high-powered professional digital camera. Next, we turned to Quebec-based freelance illustrator Lucie Crovatto to design a series of illustrations showing two girls traveling the world.

Crovatto’s normal technique involves drawing of the illustration, scanning it in to her computer, and filling in the color in Photoshop. This is where the polish comes in. We challenged Crovatto to use nail polish as her color palette. She more than rose to the challenge. The illustrations that you see on the cover and the polish preview (p.109-113) were created almost entirely with nail polish colors from the manufacturers’ spring 2002 collections.

Take another look at the cover-the purse is actually Orly Sky Blue-Pink. The skin tone is OPI Vanilla-Zuela, the fingernails are Toma Rebel, and the clouds are Orly Luminous Rose. We’ve included a color chart in the polish preview so you can match the polish colors to the illustrations. Hope you enjoy it.